To: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Subject: Sandia Laboratoy Federal Credit Union CEO JIllson suggested visit

Hello Detective Cumbie,

http://www.prosefights.org/nmlegal/prccrd/shaffer/shaffer.htm#cumbiecheck

Below forwarded email reveals that Mr Shaffer did not understand my phone message.

Shiela Shaffer left phone message on Wednesday April 20, 2011.

Therefore, I ask that you and your partner visit SLFCU CEO Christopher Jillson to reason with him why he should deposit the stolen $22,036.00 into the accounts of William Payne and Arthur Morales, $11,018 each plus 10.49% interest computed from the day the monies were stolen until it is deposited on Friday April 22, 2011.

Please do this by tomorrow noon at latest and activate your voice recorder to record Mr Jillson’s decision.

Please acknowldge receipt of this email.

Regards

William H Payne

——- Forwarded Message——-
From: “Sheila P. Shaffer, PRC” <Sheila.Shaffer@state.nm.us>
To: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 4:04:03 PM

Mr. Payne:

I received your telephone message that I had not responded to your e-mail. I reviewed your complaints and the first complaint which was received was against a credit union, the second complaint was regarding Comcast.  The complaint against Comcast was addressed; this Commission does not regulate Comcast.  When you left your message, you had said the person needed to pay and that I did not respond to an e-mail you sent.  You did not leave a telephone number for me to call you back.

Sheila Shaffer
Utility Tariff & Compliance Manager
Consumer Relations Division
New Mexico Public Regulation Commission
1-505-827-6967 or 1-888-427-5772

Paying the rich for being rich, as we are accustomed to do, has definitely been a kind of rent, but I wonder if it still applies in an age when money is largely fictional?  For the rich, there is no shortage of it; they can borrow it at negative interest, that is, at several percent below the rate of inflation: free money, as much as you want, I suppose, if you’re rich enough.

I don’t know what happens to this sort of money when it is given to the less wealthy, such as the bureaucrats who infest charitable foundations.  Possibly it evaporates, or turns into pumpkins at midnight.  We certainly don’t see many goods or services dripping down from above.

DANGEROUS & DEADLY

ED: David Koch, the now famous libertarian-conservative donor, has been extremely generous to the arts, notably to New York’s Lincoln Center.

Warren Buffet & Bill Gates have proposed to fellow billionaires and even lesser millionaires a Giving Pledge by which they promise to give away at least half their fortune.

One is left to presume that they think they can buy their way into heaven? After all, they made their money buying and selling - it is second nature to them.

MONEY RENTS

The French have a word, which has passed into English because it is so appropriate, for this class of individuals. That word is “rentier”, which means to live off rents. Now to an American that might make you think that they own a lot of property.

But the word includes Money Rents as well. And, since I am prone to do so, I would extend the meaning to any gain from capital investment. These people like to think they are “risking” their money and therefore the “gain” is a just return on their investment.

I call it rent nonetheless because the act of “earning” it involved nothing akin to real work. Like a rent, the money comes in anyway. If they wanted to really risk their money there’s always Las Vegas.

THE “THING” ABOUT MONEY

F. Scott Fitzgerald personified this class of people with the Great Gatsby - the book remains an American literary classic to this day. That book told me this: In the end, what’s it all about? It’s all about the fact that when you have “too much” money, that is, really quite more than just “enough”, life becomes a bore.

That’s the “thing” about money. We look for it, we work for it, we crave it ... and we are envious of those who have it. Yet when we have it also, we don’t quite know what next to do with our lives. It numbs ones senses and the ensuing torpor is not only dangerous but deadly.

Which is why, perhaps, some people (like the Koch or the Gates) like the idea of giving it away. Having reached the pinnacle in this life, they then think about their place in the next one?

Perhaps they think they are hedging their bets before meeting the BigGuy-in-the-Sky?

E.J. Dionne, Jr.:

“Those elites will have no moral standing to argue for higher taxes on middle-income people or cuts in government programs until they acknowledge how much wealthier they have become than the rest of us and how much pressure they have brought over the years to cut their own taxes.”

ummm, since when do elites admit anything??? Its not in their nature.

oh well. We have to do it for them.

yeah, E.J. Dionne, Jr., a better ruling class is needed.

So how about some productive suggestions, not just your usual carping?

Thom Hartmann on his recent trip to Germany, asked a wealthy industrialist why
he was willing to pay such high taxes?

The man replied, “Because I don’t want to be a rich man in a poor country.”

ZenBowman, April 20 at 4:31 pm:

‘... If you help people, and want to be acknowledged for it, I have no problem with that. Especially if you are subject to harsh criticism for the simple “crime” of being productive.’

I don’t have a problem with it either, but this doesn’t mean I’m going to stop attributing to charity what is due to charity and what is due to public relations to public relations.

I can’t think of a single example of anyone’s actual productivity being called a crime, unless of course it was some kind of crime, such as being a productive hit man.  However, there is no necessary connection between wealth and productivity (for any meaning of the word) in liberal capitalism, as you can easily observe by merely looking around at daily life, especially work life.

ZenBowman - You do realize that $600 million is pocket
change to people worth billions.  Like, $1 billion is
equal to 1,000 millions?  Do you really think someone
worth $20 billion would actually miss $600 million?

Anarchissie:  I was using the word “class” loosely—probably too loosely.  Sorry.  Question:  According to Jefferson (and others at that time) did “upper class” or “ruling class” mean those “special people” who believed in the “Secret Destiny” of America and Columbus as a “secret agent” of blah, blah, and the Masons etc.?  I hope not, but I just wondered whether this myth was circulating among the gentry at the time of Jefferson. For all my insistence on this and that, I am really ignorant. I speak more from the heart than from the head, whether or not ....  and even though hearts have no market value.

@mrfreeze:

Why should they give help anonymously?

If their contributions were totally unknown, it would give even more fodder to the “all rich people are stingy and evil” crowd.

If you help people, and want to be acknowledged for it, I have no problem with that. Especially if you are subject to harsh criticism for the simple “crime” of being productive.

Zen Bowman - I do understand the fundamental notion that giving to “good causes” is, well, good but putting self-proclaimed philanthropists on a pedestal based on the size of their giving is nothing more than marketing. If the Kochs or Gates or corporations were really sincere about their giving they’d do it anonymously.

gerard—classes are stratifications of a population.  If everyone is in a class, it isn’t really a class.  The Constitution and voting laws of the U.S. were designed to ensure that only well-off White men would have any power.  This was the ‘natural aristocracy’, the stratification, which Jefferson imagined.  The general idea was that this class would consist mostly of men of good character and intelligence who would see it as in their interests to pick governors who would not only be honest, benevolent, and clever, but also take the long view (for the sake of their and their class’s children, at least).

Things didn’t always work out this way, however—obviously.  Our author’s plaint is evidence that the little dogs of Washington, D.C., are now at last looking around and wondering where the big dogs have gone, and whining a bit about the good old days.  It’s past time they noticed, not that there’s anything they can do about it.

Several years ago I knew a woman who did ghost-writing for big cheeses; I asked her how she did it and she said it was simple: she just wrote ‘what they would think if they could think, and write if they could write.’  She used to laugh when I talked of a ruling class.  She said there was no one at the head of our institutions but con men and thieves.  Looks like E.J. has heard.

Correct me if I’m wrong:
  The “ruling class” in this country (as a democracy) is supposed to be the political will(choices) of all qualified citizens. The more important the choice, the more influence the “qualified citizens” are supposed to have, whether through decisions of elected officials or by popular vote on issues. 
  Those qualified citizens have the power to study, argue points sof view, decide and elect certain specified officials whose duty it is to promote “the general welfare” and if they do not do so, they can (will, should be) removed by mutual decisions arrived at through designated legal methods (courts, elections etc.).
  If the people do not do their part, they forefeit their power, and those who are not “legitimate” power holders, are apt take over (legally, psuedo-legally or by usurpation) and dominate.
  The people can take back their power through public actions—legal charges concerning offenses against the public welfare and/or organization of political movements (protests, special elections campaigns etc.).  If they do not use their legal rights to take back their power through public actions, they are negligent.  Allowing their elected officials to participate in, or sanction, illegal measures is a form of public negligence.  (Example:  to permit the extinction of the right of habeas corpus and neglect to reinstate it if it has been taken away from them is negligence of both officlal representatives and the people themselves.)
  This only roughly describes what I believe is meant by “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”  Our key problems today are largely due to the negligence of the people themselves, whether it is because of ignorance (due to a recalcitrant, money-dominated media failure) or to lack of fair supervision and care of public education, both of which are (according to democratic theory, primarily in the care of the people.)
  People have the right to delegate responsibilities to qualified subsets of “the public” but they are still as a whole ultimately responsible for the jurisdiction of all public agencies. If things go wrong, it is the responsibility of the people to right those wrongs by majority-designated decisions—legal decisions, legally arrived at.
  We are now far removed from these original intentions—to our great disadvantage.  Too much has been delegated to care-less, unconscientious officials.  It will not be easy to reorganize and revitalize our country, but not to do so means, essentially, the slow sickness and death of peace and justice, of cooperation, good will, and political wisdom. The very fact that such statements as these seem impossibly idealistic only indicates how far we have already lapsed into dictatorship.

There is an absolute PIC. That stands for poverty industrial complex. I have a non-
profit that’s been around 5 years and based on our outcomes for 5 years, it
appears that if you use our method to engage students in poverty sometime
between 7th - 9th grade, for one 3 hour period (which costs about $75 a person)
They go back to school and start getting better grades immediately.

Most major donors give to get their names somewhere. They don’t actually care
about best practices and they’ve already made up their mind about the problem
and the solution.

Ralph Nader recently wrote, “Waiting for the spark.”

(See http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/19-4?print.)

Like Mr. Nader, I wonder what the spark will be.

I take it E. J. Dionne is of the culture, mentality and society we associate with the middle-to-higher tiers of the established order in Washington, seeing things as they do, gossiping their gossip.  If so it is interesting that it has begun to dawn on them that nobody is piloting the ship.  In fact, someone is probably busy unbolting the wheel and the compass, with his eye on a convenient lifeboat.  Power corrupts, but in the U.S. the corruption has been particularly rapid.

ZenBowman—the poor give more to charity than the rich both absolutely and relatively.  I don’t see the point of introducing the practice of it, because it doesn’t prove anything.  For the rich, it’s just another exercise of power, a further fattening of the head.

gerard—A class comprising all individuals is not a class, or rather, it’s a trivial classification.  In any case no existing nominally democratic state I know about lacks some sort of privileged class, because the essence of the state is government and the fundamental principle of government is class: some ruling others.  Jefferson called the dominant class ‘the natural nobility’ and he was about as democratic as you’re going to find in the history of liberal politics.

mrfreeze: You are making statements with nothing to back them up. How are you so sure that they would not be donating if not for the tax breaks?

In either case, don’t you think that the money that goes to the Sloan-Kettering Cancer center will do a lot more good for humanity as a whole, than the money given to the IRS, which may be used for military interventions and the like (which by the way, the Koch funded CATO institute strongly opposes)?

Zen Bowman - Actually your argument that Koch (and let’s throw in something like the Gates Foundation) donate to charitable causes is fine, but I’ve never looked upon any of the modern day “philanthropic” organizations as true giving. It’s more of an industry that has it’s own public relations and tax benefit scam going on. It’s a way for the uber-rich to shelter themselves from taxes and if giving didn’t get the admiration of people like you (a little naive I think), they wouldn’t give at all….If they didn’t think the positive PR put money in their bank accounts, they wouldn’t be so “generous.”

They will never hear US, until they fear US!

The time for a non-violent uprising in this country is long overdue.

Our current ruling class is failing and we need to remove them ASAP.

As pointed out, when it comes to private charity, the “ruling class” is still extremely generous. The “evil David Koch” donated nearly $600 million to admirable causes:

New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell: $15 million
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center: $25 million
The Hospital for Special Surgery: $26 million
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center: $30 million
Prostate Cancer Foundation: $41 million
Deerfield Academy: $68 million
Lincoln Center’s NY State Theater: $100 million
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: $139 million

So this entire artificial narrative by the left about how all billionaires care about is reducing their expenses is false. Yes, they want to reduce their tax bill, maybe because they are opposed to the current government policies of foreign interventionism and constant bailouts. But they are still being generous.

Who wouldn’t want their money going to actual improvement of society rather than stuffing a bureaucrat’s pocket? Or worse yet, stuffing the pockets of a ruthless dictator halfway across the world?

This entirely omits any reference to evangelical religion, which was until relatively recently the predominant worldview in the US, binding together the rich and
the poor.  They worshipped together, and believed together in the image of Christ which was in the nineteenth century a very real force - not the gutted and
distorted remnant of Christian belief which now seems all too common.  The US is currently gripped by powerful forces of alienation which makes our
neighbour not a fellow-creature but at best a fellow-consumer, at worst he or she against whom I must compete for a job and a place to live.  Bare capitalism
without the covering of faith - hypocrical as it often was -dictates only selfishness, and is profoundly destructive, duplicating in our psyches the havoc it
wreaks on the natural world.  I believe that democracy itself was the product of Christian belief - most of the possible forms of government, including
extending the right to vote to all citizens, were hammered out in the dialogue between Cromwell and the army, and Cromwell and Parliament, in the 1640s
and 1650s, when the belief in a common creaturehood was taken for granted, as the underlying premise of every argument.  Although the progressive forces
were defeated on the return of the King, and the English imagination could not at that time encompass universal suffrage, changes were made which laid the
foundation for the system of constitutional monarchy which now prevails.  The question which most interests me, is whether or no our current economic
system can survive in the open society, where there are few common values, and very little real incentive to do good.

Since greed is the engine of capitalism and capitalism
is the preferred economic system in this country, why
are we surprised when capitalists exercise it?

But a funny thing happened to the American ruling class: It stopped being concerned with the health of society as a whole and became almost entirely obsessed with money.

Think altenergy.

http://www.prosefights.org/unmineable/unmineable.htm#scholle

I dont know-there is nothing new about greed and human nature. Greed is an integral part of who we are, but
we are thinking beings and can control it. It is up to each person to make moral decisions, or not.It is ok and good to make a profit, but when it overrides everything else in life, greed has won.

E.J. Dionne puts-forth his usual superficial diagnosis of the condition their CONdition is in, and CONcludes fatuously that the morbidly “self”-obsessed allamericanpeople suffer from nothing much worse than the socio-eCONomic equivalent of “the heartbreak of psoriasis.”  Meantime, the “body-politic” actually faces, along with its fellah-‘n’-gal domesticates everwhere, nothing less than an advanced case of near-terminal, industrial-strength, eco-cancer-caused massive ORGAN failure….and homo domesticus is itself the failing Organ. 

“The (much maligned) ruling class” is but one symptom of the “civilization” disease syndrome wreaking havoc on our Mother Earth’s Whole Living Arrangement….including, of course, its tame Human carriers.  Its terrified members are in-fact probably much more grievously infected, with the debilitating “self,” than are most of their fear-ridden “inferiors” among the lesser orders….and with CONsideraly more far-reaching CONsequences for ALL-concerned. 

So those perhaps not yet incurably afflicted might all together do well to devote every ‘ounce’ of whatever Natural Vitality and precious attention they still have, in a mutually beneficial effort to getover their “self”....and to get together in The Tiyoshpaye Way of Whole Living Human Community.

HokaHey!

I attribute the change in attitude at least in part to the rise of the MBA degree, and its status as an absolute requirement for advancement at the top of American business.
At the moment in time when this degree became a necessity, business began to shift its focus from long term policy to the Quarterly report, from health to Bottom Line.
“The primary duty of a corporation is to show a profit” says an MBA acquaintance of mine. But showing a profit on the QR while speeding the advance of Global Warming, for instance, or the demise of the middle class, is myopia at its worst.
American business no longer believes in a future, and have the power to make that a self-fulfilling belief.

The wealthy ruling class has bought it’s way out of even acknowledging
the rest of society. They are capable of completely insulating themselves
from the world the rest of us inhabit. They don’t care. They don’t have any
incentive to care. If it gets uncomfortable here, they’ll go somewhere else,
or hire their own mercenaries to drive them around and patrol the estate.
Third World USA is fine with them…they won’t really be in it.

Take down those edifices of power and replace them with givers rather than takers like Trump, Bush Jr, Cheney, etc.

All of these people never provided anything of value to civilization except thirst for attention and power.

The “ruling class” of a democracy is “the people.”  If that is not so now in
America—and apparently it is not—than the true “ruling class” has given up
its rights to rule itself—for one reason or another.  The “elite” class holds so
much of the people’s money and resources that a kind of “financial
constipation” is making the entire country ill. 
  Because of interdependence of each upon all, a violent purge will quite
probably only make things worse, for that is the nature of violence as we are
slowly learning through our many wars and aggressions. 
  The people need to reclaim what is theirs—the right to rule themselves as set
forth—more or less adequately—in their Constitution, Bill of Rights and
various systems of judiciary, Congress, and the Presidency. The outline is still
there, though much corrupted by present malpractices. 
  That “better ruling class? which Dionne is talking about is not an “upper” class
with better, more humane and stable “interests” but the reinstallation of the
people’s government, of, by and for the people, arrived at through the people’s
participation in their own government—constantly and at every level.  If the
people don’t like economic domination by 2% of their fellow human beings, they
have the power to change it through sheer numbers.  They can say “No” with
one united voice.  They can refuse to cooperate in wars, exploitation of
themselves and others, in cheating and lying.  They can boycott. They can
reorganize systems that will empower them financially, psychologically,
morally. All they need to do, actually, is to get together—and avoid falling into
the trap of counter-violence. They can work together.  They can cooperate in
the nearly universal desire for peace and justice.  They can move toward
recapturing the “democratic soul” of the country, beginning any day they decide
not to play into the hands of an immoral and unjust way of doing things.

With great wealth comes great responsibility. It wasn’t that long ago that most
CEO’s and/or entrepreneurs had strong identity with their communities. On this
anniversary of the fire and earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco, A.P. Gianini,
founder of Bank of America, loaned out bank funds with minimal collateral with
just a promise to pay. He was richly rewarded for his altruism. Today, BofA has
been gobbled up and is managed from afar in Charlotte N.C. They have little
interest in the community of San Francisco. The advent of great personal wealth
of CEO’s has also distanced them from their fellow citizens. We used to believe
a rising tide lifted all boats. Now it seems we are really starting to embrace the
on your own society. That will hurt the United States not help it. Too many
influential politicians and business leaders still believe in lower taxes increasing
overall revenues which has never been correllated. We have had our greatest
prosperity in eras of high taxation and some of our biggest problems in era of
low taxes. Taxes on the rich are now the lowest in decades. The jobs should be
flowing right now but they aren’t. Obama has turned the economic ship around
but very slowly while the right has second guessed his every move and pushed
for economic policies which would just sandbag our economic recovery. Too
many on Wall Street are letting their ideological blindness get in the way of
what will truly move this country forward.